Verizon Tops Latest Network Survey, AT&T Scores Fastest

RootMetrics today released its most recent survey of the big four wireless networks in the United States, crowning Verizon Wireless best overall performer.

Verizon Chief Technology Officer Nicola Palmer held a short call with media this morning to discuss the results of the survey.

“This is the equivalent of getting straight As for Verizon Wireless,” Palmer said.

Verizon’s network scored highest in reliability on a nationwide basis, while AT&T had the fastest network. But Verizon’s real achievement was bringing home the highest overall score, which takes into account data, call, voice and text performance.

It’s hard to argue with the thoroughness of the survey. In conducting testing, RootMetrics logged 218,000 drive miles and tested more than 4.6 million data points. Verizon logged an overall score of 89.7, followed by AT&T in a close second at 86.2. Sprint and T-Mobile finished third and fourth, with scores of 68.2, and 64.3 respectively.

Palmer noted during today’s call that RootMetric’s testing was done during the second half of 2013 and did not take into account the efficacy of Verizon’s recently deployed AWS spectrum, which is intended to increase capacity in high-traffic areas.

Palmer said the company had exceeded the number of cell sites at which it had projected it would add AWS. She said roughly 25 percent of the smartphones the company now sells are able to take advantage of the AWS spectrum.

Verizon isn’t done improving its network anytime soon. The company is on track to deploy VoLTE this year, and will continue adding LTE-Advanced features in the near future. "There's always something to fix. There's always something to work on or improve," Palmer said. “We're very proud of this showing for sure.”

While an overall score reflects Verizon’s lead on its competitors on nationwide basis, the results of this most recent study are perhaps most valuable to consumers looking to ascertain coverage and reliability in their specific markets. The full results of RootMetrics’ report, as well as a state by state breakdown are available online here[1].

RootMetrics today released its most recent survey of wireless networks in the United States, which crowned Verizon Wireless best over performer. Verizon Chief Technology Officer Nicola Palmer held a short call with media this morning to discuss the results of the survey.